Tag: Interview

Wayne met up with Henry Wilhelm at the Photo Marketing Association trade show in Melbourne, Australia and talked about various, interesting topics.

The last time I saw Henry was in June last year in Barcelona. This time he was visiting Australia for our local PMA show. Henry was in Australia, trip paid for by Epson and giving talks on the tests WIR (Wilhelm Imaging Research) had been doing comparing Epson ink and media with non-genuine (or compatible) third-party inks and paper.

WIR has been testing a range of third-party inks and papers that are commonly available in various countries and one available in Australia. The Australian one, Calidad, Henry was particularly interested because unlike all the others, this one made the claim of being fadeproof on its packaging. Henry has kindly given me permission to reproduce some of his images and a table of test results here, and they are most interesting.

Top row: Equivalent years of exposure to light in home display at 450 lux for 12 hours per day in an accelerated light stability test (print framed under glass, 24°C and 60% RH) with Epson DURABrite Ultra pigment inks and Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper printed with an Epson Stylus C87/ C88 inkjet printer. The Epson inks and paper have a WIR Display Permanence Rating of 40 years.

Bottom row: Equivalent years of exposure to light in home display at 450 lux for 12 hours per day in an accelerated light stability test (print framed under glass, 24°C and 60% RH) with third-party Calidad brand “pigment” inks and Calidad Inkjet Glossy Photo Paper printed with an Epson Stylus C87/ C88 inkjet printer. The Calidad inks have extremely poor light stability, with a WIR Display Permanence Rating of less than 1 year.

In the discussion that followed I made the point that, it seemed to me that many people consider the printer, ink and paper as separate decisions, whereas they actually form an integrated system. Henry agreed and went on to stress that ink and media development is complex and that none of the cheaper third-party suppliers seem able to do the research necessary. Please note this part of our discussion was purely about these low-end inks and media and did not cover the high-end fine art and serious photography inks and papers.

I raised with Henry that the perception of extremely high ink costs is what drives the use of third-party media. Henry’s response was that people should compare the costs with the old costs of traditional photographic papers and chemicals, particularly color. Certain
ly when I look back at the costs involved (including wastage) in the Cibachrome printing I did in my own darkroom, I can’t really argue with Henry’s point.

We then went on to discuss developments he is working on in his test me
thods, including extensive work WIR has been doing for the last five years on using skin tone in their tests. The rationale is that people are very sensitive to color shifts in skin tones, which makes a lot of sense. We then went on to discuss the various efforts to create a standard longevity test being worked on by other groups. Perhaps naturally, Henry does not believe any of these is on the right track.

I then asked Henry about inkjet prints on lightboxes. Firstly I wanted to know if the fading behavior of a print on transparent or translucent material was the same as for prints on paper. I thought they would be but wanted this confirmed. Henry confirmed this but then went on to talk about the difference in light levels. Henry’s tests are at 450lux for 12 hours a day. Lightboxes are usually brighter than this, often much brighter. Henry is of the view that, at least for the range we are considering, permanence should decrease linearly as the brightness is raised. So an ink/media combination that is rated at 200 years by WIR might only have a rating of 10 years if the lightbox is 4500 lux rather than 450, and it is on for 24 hours a day rather than the standard 12. It is because of this that Henry believes there is still more work to do on print permanence, even though many of the ratings on paper from all the major manufacturers appear to be more than good enough.

The last topic we discussed (to do with permanence) was whether he had been doing any work with paints, such as acrylics, painted over digital prints. He has not been because of the almost infinite number of choices. Even so, I encouraged him to do at least some testing in this area, as many digital artists were doing this already. He indicated that his main concerns, if your stick to paints with good lightfastness ratings and from good manufacturers, lay with whether the paint carrier could cause paper yellowing and whether there could be any effect on the inkjet inks or delamination of the print with reactions with the paper layers. He said he certainly felt that prints should be overcoated first before applying paint to minimize any possible effects. WIR has been doing a lot of work looking at these coatings and he noted that anyone using them needed to take suitable precautions to protect their health.

I then decided to grab some shots of Henry, these being the first Lensbaby photos of Henry that have been taken ☺. Naturally Henry was keen to receive a set, which he now has. We both left wondering where Henry and I would next have an opportunity to talk.

Recently I had the opportunity to have lunch with Henry Wilhelm, founder of Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR) and author of the classic book on image permanence.
Recently I had the opportunity to have lunch with Henry Wilhelm,founder of Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR) and author of the classicbook “The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional andDigital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures”.

I had spoken to Henry previously, at a Hewlett Packard event over inSingapore (see a separate story) but this was a great opportunity totalk to him one-on-one for some two and a half to three hours. Henrystrikes you, up front, as an on the level sort of guy. He speaks welland can be hard to shut up when you get him going on something he ispassionate about. Clearly honest and open testing and rating of imagepermanence is one of these.

Many have criticized his work because the WIR is funded from thecompanies whose products he tests. In answer to this Henry is clearthat WIR develops a standard test and that companies that contract themto do testing have NO say over the testing method. In fact WIR’scontracts with these companies make it clear that WIR can publish thepermanence performance of any product that is in the marketplace. Thislast part is important as WIR does get called in by companies to helpin the development stages. Also WIR funds some testing themselves,either because a key manufacturer prefers to do their own less rigoroustesting or because WIR deem a particular product category to be veryimportant. A recent example of this is their testing of 4 x 6 inchphoto printer display permanence (both digital and photographic). See 4×6 test.

Then we got into issues of their testing procedures. I had asked Henryin Singapore about how he calibrates accelerated tests to real time.Here we got a chance to get into the question in more detail. All WIR(and other people’s) permanence testing is done using an acceleratedtesting procedure. It is obvious that we can’t wait 100 years to findout how long a print will last. WIR has specified a viewing environmentin terms of light levels, etc. They test using much strongerillumination to have any fading visible in a shorter time. The issue isone of reciprocity failure, something all photographers should know.Reciprocity failure touches on one of the fundamental photographicprinciples. In photography an exposure is determined by two things:light level (aperture) and shutter speed (or duration of exposure).They are supposed to be linked, so that if you double the light leveland half the exposure time (or visa versa) you get the same exposure.For conventional photographic film this holds true across a wide rangeof light levels and shutter speeds. However it is known to break downat both very short and very long exposures. People doingastrophotography (how I got into photography) and high speed flashphotography see this as a need to compensate with more exposure thanyou would expect.

WIR address reciprocity failure and other issues by using the lowestpossible accelerated light intensity (lower than anyone else uses).This means their tests take longer. They have also gone to greatlengths to calibrate their tests. They have been lucky enough to findwell documented examples of photographs displayed in knowncircumstances for known periods of time and then have tested the samematerials under WIR’s testing procedure. This has allowed a good degreeof confidence to be built up at WIR that their accelerated yearsratings are close to the real number of years that could be expected.However they are continuing to work on refining this. I also asked whythey used a years figure rather than a numeric or star rating system.Henry feels such a system is just too complex for the average consumerand also that, as materials get better, it becomes harder to showdifferences in materials that are getting closer together in terms ofperformance.

There is also some controversy about the light source used in theseaccelerated tests. WIR uses fluorescent tubes. Henry acknowledges thatthere are some issues with fluorescents, but not because of theemission peak quality of their light emission. Rather it is becausethey have significantly different spectral characteristics at the blueend of the spectrum. WIR still considers them best though because ofthe heat issue. Alternatives, like Xenon, create a heat problem. Heatlowers moisture which has a major effect on image longevity. WIRis testing Xenon but have not been able to adequately solve the heatissue, plus Xenon has higher UV than they would like. They are alsotesting other daylight simulants.

WIR not only test inkjet printing methods but also conventionalphotographic ones, though they limit themselves to four color silverhalide processes. They do not test film now as Henry observes that itis on the way out as a mainstream capture method. Besides, he alsofinds inkjet the most interesting area at present. Fuji’s CrystalArchive paper is currently the highest rating silver halide color paperat a 40 year display life. I asked Henry if the printing methodaffected display life, as in whether there was a difference for printsdone on that paper in a Noritsu or Frontier digital photo printer. InHenry’s tests there are no differences in longevity caused by theprinter chosen. The quality of processing can obviously have an impact.

WIR is doing some testing of third-party papers and inks. One problemis that the third party people will typically not pay for testing asthey have no real interest in accurate longevity tests. So the testingthat they are doing they are funding themselves. The major problem withdoing any of this in a systematic way are the number of permutationswhen you add third party papers, say, with even the variations in inkfrom one manufacturer across their printer models. Henry has majorconcerns about much of the third party product. For example, a newbrand of paper is on sale in the US under the National Geographicbrand. The packaging claims 100 year life for the prints ‘on anyprinter’. Henry said that he knows that some of the printer models theythen list inside the packaging cannot achieve 100 years even on theprinter manufacturer’s best papers under WIR’s testing procedures, sohe remains concerned about such claims. The issue is that anyone cancome up with a testing criteria (and Henry is very critical of Kodakfor exactly this) but unless it is a reasonable one then the claims maynot bear much resemblance to what people will actually get.

A note here. Henry is also constantly evaluating their own testcriteria. WIR use a standardized light level that is meant to berepresentative of typical display conditions. However, he notes thatlight levels in houses have been steadily increasing due to the muchheavier use of glass and skylights letting more natural light in. Thismay mean that at some point they will have to raise their standardlight level.

We then talked about artist’s materials and the interrelationship withdigital prints. He said that they had looked at the paint permanencerating systems used by artist paint manufacturers to see if they couldcross-calibrate the two systems, but they found that the artist’s oneis quite loosely constrained because it is a
fairly old standard andthus they couldn’t get them to cross relate. What he could say was thatin lots of old prints that have been retouched it is usually theretouching material that has lasted better than the photographic colorprint, suggesting that the artist’s materials are reasonabl
y ok. Iraised the issue of reactions occurring if one overworked a digitalprint with artist’s material. Henry had seen nothing to suggest thatthis occurred. Again he pointed out that the number of permutationsmade systematic testing impossible. I also asked about framingmaterials and buffered vs. non-buffered matt boards, for example. Sofar he has seen nothing to suggest any issues with it and felt thatbuffered matt boards were probably an advantage for long termatmospheric exposure issues (which still happen in a framed print).

WIR is starting the testing of water-based coatings and also laminationproducts, especially on canvas. They are limiting it to water-basedcoatings mainly, because of a belief these are better for theenvironment and the users, as long as they work well. Such coatings areimportant not only from a surface protection perspective but also forlight filtering and protection from environmental gases, which can havea major impact on unprotected prints.

Henry is involved with other people interested in true international standards covering inkjet prints and other mediums.

Henry made a particularly interesting point towards the end of ourlunch. Because there is often a difference in longevity from colour tocolour within an ink set, with the blacks often being the longestlasting, he observed that the driver version being used, and the driversettings, can have a major impact on print longevity. This is throughthings like whether rich blacks or pure ink black is being used,variation in the use of light ink colors, etc.

Henry was out in Australia to talk at a photo industry conference aboutthe new Epson 7800/9800 printers, whose prints he rates very highly forboth display and storage life. He has a lot of good things to say aboutthe Epson’s monochrome print life because the black inks use carbonblack pigments, about as long lasting as you can get. We’ll have moreto say about this in a separate article coming soon.

Both Henry and WIR are doing a great service to those of us who use digital prints.